IBERIA - Campaign for Portugal: Testing

 

Marshal Grant and I began working on a wargames campaign concept a year ago but between one event and another, we never got it off the ground. Well no longer. 2024 has arrived with a bang and we've kicked off with a French invasion of Portugal.

I took the map above and had it printed to poster size and mounted on a pin board. I then made a load of standard military unit markers for Infantry, cavalry and depots by printing them off, mounting them on balsa and glued them to push-pins.

 We decided on 2000 points per side using Black Powder rules (what else?). Each Infantry Brigade is worth 200 points and Cavalry 100 points. Each Infantry Brigade can have a free artillery piece or cavalry squadron and each Cavalry Brigade a free gun each.

Whilst the campaign is a vehicle to generate meaningful table-top games with wider consequences and considerations, we also apply a slightly bastardized combat system which we have taken from the Worthington board game 'French and Indian Wars'. 

We are trialing this on just the one map-board and are moving simultaneously in full view. The only concession to fog-of-war is that a player may declare any unit contacted to be a 'ruse' and withdraw the piece(s) and place it back at the respective jump-off point.

I'll post a PDF of the full rules in a subsequent post once Grant has proofed them for me. We made several alterations after the first day of play as several lessons were learnt.

One principle we had was that there was to be no record keeping. Each Brigade has a number of strength points (4 for Infantry and 2 for Cavalry) which provide combat and stamina values for campaign (map-board) combat and translate to 50 points in Black Powder table-top terms.

Losses sustained through campaign map based combat are recorded by rotating the counters with the corresponding strength number being at the top. The altered strengths are easily transferable to table-top encounters.

Table top losses are calculated against the point value of any unit (battalion/squadron or battery) which is routed/destroyed (broken) rounded up to the neared 50 points. Corresponding Brigade counters suffering table-top losses are accordingly rotated down to the requisite strength point. It works!

We have decided that all table-top games will be scheduled for up to eight turns with extra turns diced for until failure. Otherwise the battles end when an army breaks - when half the brigades are broke (routed or shaken).

If any brigade retreats from combat it has a 50% chance of suffering a strength point loss (50 points BP). Brigades also take the same test for every turn out of supply from a Depot or the Jump-Off which are tracked by coloured pins when a unit passes through a location (town/village/city). Our Jump-Off locations are Lisbon and Cuidad Rodrigo.

A Campaign turn is a day. Campaign movement is by town locations - from one to another irrespective of distance. Brigades move from one location to another along either a single connecting road or a river (not both). Otherwise it is a cross-country calculation taken from the map legend - 10 miles for Infantry and 20 for cavalry. Movement must start and end at a location. Infantry move one location per day and cavalry two.

Locations have a stacking limitation of two points. Infantry Brigades have a stacking value of one and Cavalry Brigades a half. Locations which become battlefields have no stacking limitation (as forces are temporarily clashing there) and neither do supply centres indicated by filled location symbols which are already on the map.

Brigades within one move of a contact can reinforce a battle and march to the sound of the guns - arriving after turn one determined on a roll of a d6.  Once a battle is resolved, excess units above any location stacking limit are returned from whence they came (broadly).

The images contained in the post include a couple of shots from the game we played as a result of our first contact. As it happened, three brigades a side commenced hostilities with three more supporting brigades coming on from turn two through to turn seven. It couldn't have been more even.

We decided that any force which occupied the location prior to contact was a Defender and got to place randomly generated scenery as he wished. He also got to place a built up zone within his deployment zone if he desired. Otherwise all terrain will be random - for both what is present and where it is placed.

To cut a long story short, we fought what will be called the 'Battle of Villa Velha' where the Anglo-Portuguese pushed the French off their defended position - but at a greater cost.

We have learnt that whilst broken Brigades can lead to defeat on the table-top they can spare army losses - provided you roll well on the retreat tests. Big battalions which cost more than 50 points count dearly if lost - rounding up to 100 points being half a brigade.

As a result, Grant and I are actually very enthusiastic with how this worked and will continue playing the campaign across 2024.